Sunday, February 26, 2006

a message for you

watch RENT. i don't care if you hate musicals, or you think it's too dramatic, or if your name is aaron bailey. watch it for the amazing acting, watch for the little idiosyncracies of each actor. watch it for the incredible story behind it, and the way it defined an entire generation an emotional movement. watch it for the person who wrote it, who died the morning of its opening and had an incredible life. watch it for the cast who really lived together, and who are amazing people.

overlook what you might think is a melodramatic ending, or lyrics you don't understand, or character flaws you don't think are realistic. look at it in a real way, in the way that you want to affect the audience, the feelings you want people to leave with. think of it in terms of the story, and the meaning of the entire group of people, and what each line and each lyric means. what it for the amazing final number where all the songs fit together perfectly.

more than anything- watch it for yourself. watch it for the times you've sat and thought "i wish things were like they were a year ago." i know that ryan and i have been thinking and praying that very often right now. i don't know if my other friends from back home are thinking the same thing, i don't know if they ever miss what we had or are worried that they're losing it like i am afraid of every day, but this movie helps me udnerstand life so much more. and don't demean it or me if you don't understand it or refuse to see it.

sit down with me to watch it and let's talk- i'll make you love it. i know these people, we are these people. and i don't know if sini or aaron or scruggs or james understands what this makes me feel, but it allows me to trust that we will never stop being friends. it lets me stop being afraid that i'm going to lose everything. it brings me back home, back to planet earth. i trust in the world, i understand that things change and sometimes things really fucking suck and sometimes it feels like my whole world is colapsing in on me and this is the end isn't it? but it isn't, and i believe in myself and my friends that things like this aren't going to end.

after watching the entire thing over ten times, the director/actor commentary, all the deleted scenes, the full-length documentary, all the interviews and illegal videos of the stage performances i can get my grubby little hands on, it only amazes me more. you think it's just some shallow musical you can look over, but if you can't look deeper into it than that than it's your own fault for thinking it shallow because you won't consider that a movie of its calibre can carry something greater within it. i challenge you to really watch it, to really consider the acting and the tiniest detail. i challenge you to appreciate the musical talent that had to go into it and the real point of the ending- no matter if you like it or not, think about the message they're trying to get across.

these things are real. you might think it's over the top, but it isn't.
i have fallen in love with everything RENT.

i hope that my friends understand how much i miss them, and how on the days where i feel closest to giving up, the memories of our last year together keeps me going. please, never forget any of that, and get back in touch, and stay that way, and don't ever, ever let me or any of us lose you. we are each other and we are one heart and we can not let space separate that. i love you all so very much, and this movie solidifies that love, and squelches my fear of losing you all, and brings me back to a place that i love every time i watch it.

good night.
good morning.
good life.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

you can't dump me- you're blind!

CSI is probably the most rediculous show i have ever had the displeasure of watching. it positively butchers the legal, medical, and scientific world in ways i didn't know people could fathom. the medical tests that the doctors and medical examiner's conduct are out of this world, having images of the human body project up on a computer screen that no current hospital ever had or could ever invent. and since when can these machines point out, with bright, blinking yellow boxes, exactly what the examiner is looking for? and since when is it necessary protocol to accuse a man just out of surgery that he purposely put his copilot in a coma so he couldn't answer questions he somehow knew would occur after a plane crash he didn't cause?

W-T-F!

and their characters have such mesmerizing dialogue as "you can't dump me- you're blind!" and "good thing manequins aren't people." not to mention the criminals they portray are probably the most moronic characters ever created so much that they are laughably inhuman. there's a doctor who wants to gain on the insurance policy he's taken out on his hands, what is his first idea as to how? well, obviously, take his partner to grand central station and have his partner pour acid on his hands during rush hour. but- uh oh- the partner flubs it up and the doctor ends up dead from acid to the face.

who writes this shit?

i won't even go INTO the absolute idiocy that is their genetics lab and forensic pathology, considering the abhorable dialogue only humorize slightly the way they portay genetics, with tests that are so science fiction i feel like i'm watching star trek. you take the DNA from a dead girl, DNA from another guy, and instantly you can match it to a child you have no sample of? creating a dna fingerprint in about 6 seconds by putting a drop of blood into a canister? let me tell you, i've made a DNA fingerprint, and it takes 2 days and lots of work- they don't even extract the DNA from the blood! they don't even run a polymerase chain reaction so where the hell did they get the sample?! there's no centrefuge, no adding dye, no counting nitrogenous bases- they don't even know how to read the damn fingerprint! how did these people get into crime scene investigation?!

ok, so i did go into the idiocy that is their genetics lab, but i got all excited.

the point here is, if the news media wants to assume that criminals out there are devising perfect crimes because of crime shows, they certainly aren't crime shows like CSI, because that shit is off the wall crazy.

no polymerase chain reaction using a viral plasmid?! who does that?

<3 gen

Sunday, February 12, 2006

cliffs of red clay

today was a good day. the day that i needed. the day to give me a reality check, about things that are beautiful and good and untainted by everything else that i have in my life.

today i woke up late and ate cinnamon rolls with my friends. we went for a walk through deep woods and saw antique bridges and walked through mud and climbed over mossy trees. we went up high hills and looked out over the tennessee river while the sun was high on the horizon and the chilly air blew up off the river and made us all huddle together. we heard the water and the birds and the wind.

and i walked home with my true love in the slow-falling snow, the tiny flakes hitting my eyelashes and we kissed in the street. and i stood in lindsey's front yard while the snow came down in great big chunks of ice and coated the ground and the wind blew the snow sideways. and i stared out over the river while the sun peeked out from under the clouds and heavy snow blowing everywhere and i kissed ryan again and everything was just so beautiful.

then we all made pasta together, ate a nice meal all at the table like a family, and watched good movies and loved each other very much.

today was the day that i needed to show me everything.

<3 gen

Thursday, February 09, 2006

how ryan cooper feels about dinosaurs....

i do not think there is a single thing in the world i love more than kittens in cups.


from now on, when someone asks "what's your favorite thing in the whole world?"
my answer, emphatically, is kittens in cups.
<3>

Monday, February 06, 2006

the only living boy in new york

it's amazing what a nicer mood you get into after you clean up your space. living with four people in one room, this place gets pretty disgusting. i'm someone who doesn't mind mess and can't clean up after myself to save my own life, i just dust compulsively and my roomies appreciate that, lindsey is someone who likes things clean and neat, but is cluttered because she's always too bouncy and excited to worry about cleaning, andrew doesn't give a fuck about anything, the least of which is a clean room, and ryan will bitch about the room all day and night but won't lift a finger until it gets to the point where ebola is growing in the corners.

so, i took the initiative, put on garden state, and cleaned the motherfuck out of this place. i overhauled the bathroom, getting rid of weeks worth of newspaper and toilet paper rolls. cleaned out the sinks, got rid of the dish drainer [i.e. putting it on the shelf in the hallway], and put all our stuff on one side. we've got a new suitemate moving in and he'll need a sink.

then i threw away every ounce of garbage on mine and ryan's side of the room that i could find, put our clothes into equal piles, hid my stuff beside the tv stand, and organized all our school books. i also fixed ryan's shrines, excorsized his lamp [it was possessed by demons of the underworld], and dusted every appliance and object i could reach- on both sides of the room.

so now i have a nice environment to drink my tea, write my essay, and finish garden state before falling to sleep.

god damnit.
it's 3:47 a.m.

the one downfall to cleaning like a madwoman- now i don't have time to do the things that caused me to clean. i will go to sleep, then use the hour between french and english tomorrow to finish this paper, it's really all downhill from the point i'm at now anyway.

"good luck exploring the infinite abyss"

<3 gen

p.s. i need to buy a watch, buy myself a pay-as-you-go cellphone, apply for a debit card, and start seriously looking at scholarships. good night.